Articles by: Charlie Clark

I have one thing in common with Joan Hitt, matriarch of the construction company family (that’s their name on Virginia Hospital Center’s Family Center for Radiation Oncology): We both spent our childhoods in Cherrydale. That deep-rooted but evolving Arlington neighborhood, she agreed with me, holds rich memories. Born in 1935 […]

County board members who balked at spending $350 million on a Columbia Pike streetcar have not—in the 13 months since dropping that bombshell—settled on an alternative traffic cure. Ideas like fancier bus rapid transit still percolate as the board prepares to swear in two new members. Enter one private entrepreneur […]

Yes, Virginia, Arlington has an official song. A friend recently passed me a copy of the sheet music for “Arlington,” written over four decades ago by the late Ernest K. Emurian, then-pastor of Cherrydale United Methodist Church. I’d wager it’s sung or even recalled by very few of today’s august […]

My neighborhood’s most notable military hero returned for a visit a few months back. Long-timers on my cul-de-sac spread the word they had spotted Gen. James Dozier, whose 1981 kidnapping by the Italian Red Brigades terrorist group made international news, stopping by in a car for old time’s sake. So […]

Arlington’s ailing but still centrally located Ballston Common Mall got an economic shot in the arm last week. For frequent users such as I, the news telegraphed local history repeating itself. The county board voted to cough up $10 million for parking and transportation improvements following years of public-private planning. […]

Lots of bustle in our county last week suggesting there’s life left in the famous “Arlington Way.” That tradition of ultra-thorough community consultation permeated the long-awaited release of the Community Facilities Study and the four – count ‘em – four-day public “charrette” planners held on re-envisioning Lee Highway. The facilities […]

Arlington’s namesake home is planning a small makeover. At an Arlington Cemetery auditorium last month I was privileged to sit in on a National Park Service historians roundtable discussing how the well-visited Arlington House–the Robert E. Lee Memorial might modernize its portrayal of blacks, women and plantation domestic life. Park […]

I’ve long felt that the strangest episode in Arlington County’s history is the presence of the American Nazi Party here, from 1958 to 1983. Even stranger is the way memories of the party’s charismatic, racist and anti-Semitic founder George Lincoln Rockwell persist in the minds of longtime Arlingtonians. My high […]

“Since this is the 2200th county board candidate debate, I brought my family,” joked Democratic candidate Christian Dorsey as four who hope to help govern Arlington appeared Oct. 21 at the Committee of 100. Their evening advertisements for themselves – some familiar, some fresh two weeks before the Nov. 3 […]

Of all the mansions atop select hills in Arlington, one has stood out in my mind since my boyhood. “Whispering Oaks,” so named on its plaque at the corner of North Glebe and Chesterbrook Road, affords a swell view of Walker Chapel. The stately pale-red-brick home fronted with eight columns […]